AuthorTopic: iMessage incredible delays (Read 1316 times)

I am sometimes getting delays of half an hour, an hour or whatever until Janet gets iMessage messages from me. Anyone else getting this horrific problem? (Because I really really need to get help when I am in pain.)

May happen when the recipient has an Apple account and a device capable of receiving iMessage, but has no wifi or mobile data, or has disabled data. In that case, iMessage falls back on SMS texts. But it seems to wait a very long time, before resorting to SMS, an hour may be about right.

There are other quite valid scenarios when even SMS texts can be delayed, for hours or even days. Bottom line, SMS or iMessage simply cannot be relied upon when time is of the essence, despite what 99% of teenagers may think. If it is urgent, make a phone call.

I canít understand why iMessage doesnít at least try (I am assuming anyway) to just directly contact another device over IPv6 if available - would need to go indirectly via server the first time to ask the other end to pierce its firewall, thatís the way I think it would have to be done. But after that has been set up, I donít see any need for long delays, provided both ends are contactable, yet there have been countless cases where I know that the Mrs Weaver is on the network because I can access her machine immediately via other direct methods.

If iMessage is not delivering the goods, and I am desperate to get some help, I now use Find iPad or whatever it is called and get it to remotely command her machine to start making alert noises, and that gets her attention if she has put her iPhone or iPad down somewhere. This started when she lost her iPhone, we used that app and tracked it down to a bed of nettles with the help of a very good detailed map at first and then the pinging noise.

That falls down in that iMessages are stored in the cloud and also can be delivered to multiple devices for a single recipient, and also multiple recipients. My iMessages are potentially delivered to an iPad, a watch, a phone and two macs. They all keep global state of messages received/unread/deleted etc. And lots of people donít have IP V6

Andyfitter makes a very good point about those features that I had not thought of. It doesnít mean that I could not do direct messaging, but it does mean I could not rely on it for every case and I would also have to send stuff to a server since I want stuff to be saved.

If I were designing the iMessage app, I would make sure that I always send both a direct message if it makes sense and one to the server, both back-to-back. For the direct message to multiple recipients thing, you could consider doing multicast where it makes sense. It would be worth doing because of the huge increase in reliability- would work even if the internet is down but your correspondents are on the same LAN. And in the same LAN-case, you can always use IPv6 100% because you can use linklocal addresses. The designers could put in a bit more work. More testing. As an enhancement, you could tell the server to bother or not bother contacting certain destination machines if you have received a direct ack from first, so that would mean a race with say a 2ms delay before sending the message to the server in order to allow a direct ack to get back to you first.

I would do a test to see if a direct message works and then remember the result. When a direct message fails then you have to fall back to the nasty old method and retest.

I have had this slowness on my old iPhone 4 that I use when trying to send an 'iMessage', what you have to do is delete All of the messages to that person and start afresh on your device.It is a known problem for Apple.